She Gets That from Me

by Robin Wells

He laughs. “Yeah, it does. But by the time you get through renovating, it’ll be fabulous.”

  “Whoa.” I hold up my hands. “Renovating?”

  “That’s what you’ll need to do to get what you want at what you want to pay. But don’t worry—I have a building company that handles all that, and I’ll get you the best prices in the area.”

  “So you’re not just a Realtor—you’re a contractor, too? You’re like both Property Brothers rolled into one?”

  “Yeah, sort of.”

  We look at three more houses, each uglier than the last. I’m enjoying Brett’s company, but I can’t visualize any of the houses he’s showing me looking like places I’d want to live.

  We stop for lunch at a little grill in Everett. The weather is perfect—spring-like but still cool, unlike the steamy May heat of New Orleans. I gaze out the window at fir trees blowing in the wind. I’ve really missed this view, I realize. In Louisiana, you only see firs on Christmas tree lots.

  “You don’t seem wowed by anything I’ve shown you,” he says.

  “I can’t get over how much more homes cost here versus Louisiana.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s the West Coast for you.” He takes a sip of coffee. “Are you sure you want to move back?”

  I nod. “Absolutely. I’m ready to get out of New Orleans.”

  “Why? It’s a great city.”

  I sigh. “I miss my family. Plus I don’t want to keep wondering if every child I see might be my husband’s.” The words pop out before I realize what I’m saying.

  He grins at me. “I’ve heard a lot of reasons that people want to move, but I’ve got to say, that’s a new one.”

  I give a nervous laugh, too embarrassed to look him in the eye. “I can’t believe I just said that. That’s the second time I’ve just blurted out stuff to you.”

  “That’s not surprising. I’m known as the Blurtmaster.” He leans forward, his expression comically intense, and looks from side to side, as if making sure no one can overhear him. “I really work for the CIA, interrogation department,” he says in a loud whisper. “Real estate is just a cover.”

  I laugh. “I can almost believe it.”

  “Don’t.”

  I laugh again.

  He leans back and gives me a warm smile. “Seriously, if you want to talk, I’m a good listener. And anything you tell me is covered by Realtor-client privilege so I can’t divulge it.”

  I laugh again. “Good to know.” I take a sip of iced tea. “I think I’ve already told you way too much for someone I haven’t seen in nineteen years, but I’ll keep it in mind.”

  We talk about styles of houses and football teams and other people from high school as we finish lunch. We climb back into his SUV and tour three more houses, then he glances at his watch. “I have to pick up my son from school, but there are a couple of other places I want to show you. One of them is a condo; you’re likely to need a place to lease for a month or two while you wait to close on a house and renovate. It’s not far from Petey’s school. Are you okay with picking him up and dropping him at my mom’s before we go see it?”

  I look at my phone. I’ve been checking it all day, but I still haven’t heard from Zack. The knot in my stomach is growing bigger and tighter.

  And the truth is, I’d far rather hang with Brett than go back to my parents’ house. “Sure,” I say. “I’d love to meet him.”

  * * *

  —

  BRETT’S SON IS adorable. He has dark hair, bright hazel eyes, and freckles sprinkled across his nose. He’s wearing a blue-and-red-striped polo shirt and jeans, and he comes running up to the SUV as we move forward in the car line. “Hi, Dad!” he calls.

  “Hey there, bud.” Brett hits a switch and the back door opens. Pete starts to climb in, then freezes when he sees me.

  “This is Mrs. Bradley,” Brett says.

  I turn around more fully and smile. “Hi, Pete.”

  His face falls. “Why’d you bring her?”

  “Hey, that’s no way to greet somebody,” Brett chides.

  “Nice to meet you,” he mutters as he climbs into his booster seat.

  I widen my smile. “Great to meet you, too.”

  Brett makes sure Pete’s seat belt is fastened, then rebuckles his own and puts the car in drive. “Mrs. Bradley is moving here with her husband, and I’m helping her find a house.”

  “Oh.” His eyes brighten considerably. “So you’re not on a date with Dad?”

  “No,” I say with a smile.

  “My mom is dating.” His brow crumples in a dark frown. “She says she’s going to marry Mr. James and have a baby with him, but I don’t like him.”

  “He’s a nice guy,” Brett says.

  This is very generous of him, to speak well of the man who, I assume, broke up his marriage. He loves his son very much, I think.

  “He’s a dork,” Pete says. “Besides, I want you and Mom to get back together.”

  “I told you, sport. That’s not going to happen.”

  “It could.”

  “Nope.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’ve been over this a million times. The marriage is over.”

  “But it doesn’t have to be,” Petey insists.

  “Yes, it does. Sometimes marriages are like Sammy. They get sick and die.”

  “Who was Sammy?” I ask.

  “My goldfish,” Petey says solemnly.

  “Oh,” I say. “Sorry for your loss.”

  Brett gives me a sidewise grin.

  “You and Mom aren’t even sick,” Petey tells his father. “You could get back together if you wanted to.”

  “Marriage isn’t just one person’s decision.”

  “I’m working on Mom, too. If she gets rid of Mr. James, I know she’ll love you again.”

  “Petey, married people need to have certain feelings for each other. If the feelings aren’t there, the marriage can’t work.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because marriage is supposed to be a heart connection. If you don’t have that, it’s not really a marriage, and both people get more and more unhappy. It’s bad for children to be raised in a miserable environment.”

  “I didn’t think it was miserable.”

  “That’s because we divorced before it got so bad that it affected you.”

  “But the divorce is affecting me!”

  “I know, son.” He glances at Petey’s distraught little face in the rearview mirror. Brett’s eyes are dark and somber. “And I’m sorry about that. But the divorce is a done deal and it’s time to move on.”

  He steers the car into a neighborhood by the Puget Sound. “And speaking of moving on, I have your tablet and headset with me. Want to play a game?”

  “Yes!” Pete exclaims. “But wait—will it count against my game time tonight?”

  “No, bud. This’ll be extra.”

  “All right!”

  Brett reaches in the console, pulls out a digital tablet and headset, and hands them to Petey, all without taking his eyes from the road. He’s had some practice at this, I think.

  A moment later, Petey is happily occupied, the headset affixed to his ears.

  “Whew.” Brett cuts me a sideways glance. “Sorry you were a captive audience to that.”

  “No problem. You handled it really well.”

  “It didn’t feel like it from where I’m sitting.”

  “Well, from the passenger seat, it was darn impressive.”

  He lifts his shoulders. “I do my best. Most days it feels like it’s never enough.” He flips on a turn signal. “I hate feeling like I’ve let Petey down.”

  I search my mind for something positive to say. “Hey, life and love are the biggest gifts of all, and you’ve given him both of those,” I say. “You�
�ve got to look for the gifts, right? It’s all a matter of perspective.”

  “Yeah.” He glances over at me and shoots me a grin. “I guess the perspective is better in the passenger seat.”

  “It’s always easier to be objective if you’re just along for the ride,” I say.

  He stops at a stop sign and smiles at me. I feel a little flicker of attraction I haven’t felt in a long time.

  “I can slide over,” I say. “There’s room for two over here.”

  “Sounds great, but who would drive?”

  “Maybe neither of us.” I think about my infertility, about Zack’s donor child, and about our argument. I feel a distance from my husband that’s further than 1,500 physical miles. “Maybe we’re all just passengers and we’re fooling ourselves to think we’re driving.”

  “Wow. That’s deep, Jessica.”

  “Yeah.” I grin. “Better put on your waders.”

  He pulls into a driveway. A fit woman in yoga pants with short gray-streaked hair is in the front yard, watering a rosebush. She smiles, waves, puts down the hose, and heads toward the car. Brett lowers his window.

  Petey yanks off his headset and bounds out of the back seat, clutching his backpack. “Hey, Grandma!”

  The woman hugs him. “Hey, sprout.”

  Brett gestures to me. “Mom, this is Jessica Bradley. She used to be Jessica Caldwell. She was valedictorian the year I graduated, remember?”

  She leans in the car window. She has friendly brown eyes and an open smile. “Yes, I do! You gave a wonderful speech. And you’re even prettier now than you were then.”

  I feel a rush of pleasure. Compliments always make me feel validated. “Thank you. It’s nice to meet you.”

  “I’m showing her some houses,” Brett says. “I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

  “Take your time. Petey and I will be just fine.”

  “Your mom is really nice, and Petey’s adorable,” I say after Brett closes the window and starts backing out of the drive.

  He nods. “Mom is the best. And as for Petey . . .” He brakes, then shifts gears. “I didn’t have a clue how much I could love someone until he came along.”

  Wistfulness fills my chest. “Everyone says that parenthood takes you to a whole other level of love.”

  “That’s true, but it comes with a flip side.” He turns beside a tall willow with branches that nearly sweep the ground. “Nothing hurts like having something hurt your child. And it especially sucks if that something is you.”

  “Like you told Petey, though—it’s worse for a kid to be in the middle of a bad marriage,” I say. “I think he’s really lucky to have you as a dad. You seem great at it.”

  He looks at me, his eyes dark with appreciation. “I try.”

  I think about Brett’s comment after he drops me off at my parents’ house. Nothing hurts like having something hurt your child.

  Is it true? I’m not a parent, so I can’t really say. Right now, though, nothing hurts like not being able to have a child of my own, especially since learning that my husband has one with another woman.

  I pull out my phone and call Zack again. He and I desperately need to talk.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Quinn

  TIME SEEMS TO go into an entangled dimension as soon as I see Miss Margaret on the kitchen floor. It slows down, it drags, it runs backward until it smacks right into what the hell just happened? I later learn it took less than five minutes for the ambulance to reach us, because one was parked just a few blocks away when I called.

  As we’re waiting, though, time is measured by Zack’s compressions on Margaret’s chest. An eternity seems to pass before the wail of a siren pierces the air.

  I run to the door, jerk it open, and race to the street, waving my arm to flag the ambulance. Two blue-uniformed paramedics jump out.

  “What’s the emergency?” asks a woman with dark hair pulled into a ponytail.

  My words jumble over one another as I try to get them out. “Seventy-nine-year-old woman. She fell off a step stool. No pulse, no breathing. Hip looks funny.”

  Both paramedics dash inside. I point to the kitchen, where Zack is working on Margaret. He doesn’t stop until both paramedics kneel down and the woman says, “We’ll take over now.”

  Zack straightens, stands, and steps out of their way.

  “I’ve got a pulse,” says the other paramedic, a fortyish muscular man with a buzz cut. He leans over Margaret as the female paramedic fits on a blood pressure cuff. “Ma’am, can you hear me?”

  Margaret opens her eyes, then closes them again.

  “Ma’am, are you in pain?”

  She opens her mouth, but no words come out. The woman paramedic gently fits an oxygen mask on her. The man talks into a crackling radio. The woman runs back to the ambulance, opens the rear door, and wheels out a gurney, along with an assortment of traction devices. They put her neck in a brace, then attach a splint to her upper leg. Margaret groans.

  “Do you know if she’s on any medications?” the man asks me.

  I nod. “For blood pressure and cholesterol, I think.”

  “Do you know which ones?”

  “I’ll get them from her room,” I say.

  “I’ll drive you to the hospital,” Zack tells me as they strap Margaret to the gurney. “Better bring her purse. You’ll need her insurance information.”

  Good thinking, my mind registers as I race upstairs to her room.

  “Grab a sweater, your phone, and whatever else you need,” Zack says when I return. “You’ll be there for a while. We’ll follow the ambulance.”

  I reach into Brooke’s coat closet, pull out a black cardigan, and carry it, along with my purse and Miss Margaret’s, as we follow the paramedics pushing the gurney down the sidewalk. I hand her medicine bottles to the female paramedic, then I touch Margaret’s gray hair as they open the back of the ambulance. “I’ll see you at the hospital,” I tell her. I don’t know if she can hear me or not. Her eyes are closed, her lids blue-veined and thin as voile.

  Across the street, Zack opens the passenger door of his BMW for me. As I climb in, I realize I’m shaking like poor Ruffles when she goes to the vet.

  “You okay?” he asks.

  “Yeah.” I reach for the seat belt. “How—how did you know what to do?”

  “I took a CPR course after my dad’s heart attack.”

  I’d taken a CPR course for babysitters back when Lily was born, but I hadn’t instantaneously gone into rescue mode like Zack. I’d stood there like a lump of lard, trying to comprehend what was going on, while Zack had quickly checked her pulse and respiration. “How many heart attacks did your father have?”

  “One.”

  “Did he make it?”

  I notice his hands clench the steering wheel. They’re nice hands, large and strong and slightly tanned. “No.”

  The air leaves my chest in a sudden exhale. Zack pulls away from the curb, turns into a neighbor’s driveway, backs up, and then steers his car directly behind the ambulance. As the ambulance moves away from the curb, Zack follows it.

  “Dad might have survived,” Zack says, “if someone with him had known how to do CPR.”

  “Were you there?”

  “No. I was in New Orleans, and he was on a golf course in Ohio. But I wanted to learn what to do so I wouldn’t ever be a helpless bystander like his golf buddy. Not knowing how to save my dad’s life pretty much ruined the rest of his.” He puts on his flashers and speeds up to close the distance behind the ambulance.

  “How long ago did this happen?”

  “Four years this June.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He nods, wordlessly accepting my condolences.

  I watch him turn the black leather steering wheel to follow the ambulance around a corner. The car lurche
s to the right, and my pounding heart lurches with it.

  I suddenly notice something that I normally would have looked for right away, if I hadn’t been thrown for such a loop when Zack first showed up at the door.

  On the fourth finger of his left hand gleams a simple gold band.

  Lily’s father—who is also the father of the six-week-old embryo growing in my womb—is married.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Quinn

  “FAMILY OF MARGARET Moore,” calls a middle-aged man in blue scrubs and a surgical cap.

  I put down my phone and jump to my feet, and Zack rises, too. We’ve been in the hospital’s surgery waiting room for the last hour and a half, but it feels like twice as long.

  I’ve spent most of that time avoiding him. I can barely mentally grasp the fact that he’s Lily’s bio dad, much less the father of my unborn baby. It just feels like too much, trying to deal with his unexpected appearance and Miss Margaret’s health crisis all at the same time. Instead of trying to make conversation, I’ve paced the hallway and talked on the phone.

  I called Alicia’s mother, explained Margaret’s emergency, and made arrangements for her to keep Lily until I can get free. I called the moving company and canceled the pack-up and moving appointment. I called Margaret’s minister. I tried to call Annie and Sarah from my single parents group, but ended up leaving voice mails when neither picked up. I called the Realtor who was supposed to come by the house to sign a listing agreement with Margaret. Last of all, I called my assistant, Terri. I told her about Margaret, and then found myself spilling the whole story about Zack—including the fact that I’m pregnant with his child.

  Terri is good in a crisis. After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, she and her husband rescued people from attics and rooftops in their recreational motorboat. In one case, she’d coaxed an elderly woman into coming out her attic window and climbing into the boat. Hopefully she can talk me down, too.

  “I can’t even allow myself to really think about what his presence might mean to my life right now,” I tell her.

  “You’ll figure all that out later,” she says. “Right now you’re doing what needs to be done.”